Find solution
Is Amazon Kindle worth the money?

I'm boycotting Amazon. But I hear they lose money on every Kindle Fire. Does that mean I can buy one?

  • So, I'm boycotting Amazon over their treatment of Wikileaks. But as a  $200 dollar Android tablet, the Kindle Fire looks pretty cool. Especially now I know I can run my own software on it (). I hear they lose money on every Fire sold. So can I, in good conscience, buy one and then *not* buy anything through it? (Use a different app. store, load my own mp3s and PDF books)? I'll still be hurting them, right? :-)

  • Answer:

    [Update 23 Nov 2011]: it appears that the Kindle Fire is not sold at a loss: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204517204577044571262047572.html The truth is that Amazon sells the Kindle Fires at a loss on purpose. Notice that all Kindle Fire purchases come with a free 1-month Amazon Prime subscription. This is key to their loss-leader strategy. A recent Practical Commerce article revealed the following data points: Once they join Prime, Amazon's customers' gross merchandise volume grows from $400 a year to $900 a year in their first year of membership For each one million Prime members, Amazon's revenues increase by 1.5 percent Prime members spend 130 percent more than regular Amazon customers 92 percent of Prime members surveyed by Piper Jaffray plan to renew their membership. taken from http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/3043-Amazon-Prime-5-Million-Members-20-Percent-Growth Also, Amazon has reported that people purchase more while on tablets than they do on computers. Source: http://www.businessweek.com/printer/magazine/the-omnivore-09282011.html In the end, Kindle Fires may be seen as a trick to get people into Amazon Prime. You'd be better off boycotting them altogether. (Or buy them and root them, as per 's answer.)

Cedric Chin at Quora Visit the source

Was this solution helpful to you?

Other answers

If you're boycotting Amazon, then the answer is no. If you're kind of boycotting Amazon, then the answer is yes. Take a stand.  :)

Garrick Saito

Buy it, recommend your friends and family do so as well. This is the easy part. Now, you'll have to put in a bit of effort. Root the thing and drop either a clean build of Android in, or a custom ROM. CM7, MIUI, pick one from another chef, wait for CM9, your choice. The main thing here is to tweak the thing to a point where it cannot fulfill the purpose Amazon intended: sell stuff from their store. You on the other hand should squeeze as much utility out of it as you can while avoiding giving them any of your cash. If you can set up all the slates recommended by you to do the same, you've dealt much more damage than just boycotting them.

Lindsey Chiew

Not only can you, you actually have an ethical obligation to buy as many of them as you can afford. Jailbreak/root them, then give them to your friends, relatives and anyone else you trust to sign and adhere to your contract that they will not purchase any apps or eBooks from Amazon. This may take off as a movement and be the deciding moment when Amazon realizes they effed with the wrong principled whistleblowers.

Anonymous

You should boycott Amazon happily, like going to church. They loose money in the device but they make gigantic amount of money by selling e-books, evading taxes, and treating their workers, at least here in Europe, like slaves, they're nice, apparently, nice people, condescending with people who work for them that are treated like slaves. There are interesting articles, thing like this, for example: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/01/week-amazon-insider-feature-treatment-employees-work the guy Mr. Bezos is the 20th richest person in the world, why not been the 200th richest person without exploiting people who works for you? Too easy becoming rich evading taxes and taking advantage of people who need to work. And they say that they are focusing all their energies on the customer; I don't want all that attention from people who are paid nothing and live a miserable life and for this reason I deleted my account in Amazon, stopped using my kindle and went back to my local bookstore that was, actually that is about to close because everyone is buying on the internet.

Teo van Gogh

I'd say that you would be hurting Amazon by using its product but boycotting its ecosystem (pocketing the difference) in about the same way that Amazon is hurting Google by using its free product (Android) but giving nothing back to the Android community. Why not?

Neale Paterson

Related Q & A:

Just Added Q & A:

Find solution

For every problem there is a solution! Proved by Solucija.

  • Got an issue and looking for advice?

  • Ask Solucija to search every corner of the Web for help.

  • Get workable solutions and helpful tips in a moment.

Just ask Solucija about an issue you face and immediately get a list of ready solutions, answers and tips from other Internet users. We always provide the most suitable and complete answer to your question at the top, along with a few good alternatives below.